Tuesday, 3 January 2012

New Years Resolutions

By the end of the year, after a week of excess, everyone's guilt induced thoughts turn from parties, drunkenness, and over eating, and towards New Year resolutions.

The crowds of freezing smokers huddled in the doorways of licensed premises like so many homeless people, decreases for a couple of days, or maybe a week after New Years Eve, making it easier for smug individuals, like myself, who do not smoke, to access and egress the pubs, restaurants, and shops. Outside of the nation's hospitals fewer pasty faced people sit in wheelchairs, while enduring some of the coldest temperatures of the year in pyjamas and a dressing gown, or standing in the doorway, while hanging onto a saline drip with one hand and holding a cigarette in the other. The number of joggers and cyclists, all wearing brand new trainers and Lycra shorts, increases dramatically for a couple of weeks after the advent of the New Year, while memberships to the gym outstrip all expectations. By the end of the month, gym membership fee's collected and banked, the gyms are once again left to a handful of fitness enthusiasts, while the brand new trainers are relegated to the back of the wardrobe, to be worn as a fashion item for a stroll to the pub when the weather is less inclement, and the Lycra shorts, which did so little to hide the fact that the wearer was exercising in order to lose weight, end up in the first charity bag of the new year to turn up on the doorstep. Diet clubs also prosper in January, some people trying to lose the pounds they've put on over the Christmas period, while others, with the best of intentions, sign up, as they do every year, to lose the extra two and a half stones in weight they have been carrying around for the past twenty years. I can't say I believe in making new year's resolutions, as it places far too much pressure on the individual, and one borrowed cigarette in a moment of weakness, or piece of chocolate discovered in the back of the fridge will render the resolution null and void for yet another year. Much better, in my opinion, to start resolutions for personal improvement without the extra burden of failure that the new year inevitably brings. After finally giving up smoking and drinking, eating chocolate biscuits and cream cakes, and having begun jogging, you may well live a little longer, but if you don't it will definitely feel like it.

I totally agree, my New Years Resolution is always to not make any New Years Resolutions. Have enjoyed finding your blog and am pleased that the lay-out is very similar to mine - I must be doing something right! If you feel like checking out my writing blog Roy, you can find it at http://www.karennaylor.blogspot.com

Hi Karen, I am happy that you have discovered the blog and like it. I will visit your blog as you suggested. I am not sure that you can draw the conclusion that I am doing something right.What I would say is do what pleases you and write what you want to write, if no one else likes it tough.